Keen as mustard for Classic and can’t wait to come back and play it, but I find myself already looking forward to what comes next
Vanilla was an epic adventure with by far the greatest server community culture (pre cross realm) but there were a few glaring issues that was just really poor design:
- Sub optimal hybrid performance, particularly with tanks making really only warriors viable.
- Class and spec driven content - you basically had massively favoured classes in turn having to take massively favoured cookie cutter specs to do well which led to poor variety in raiding
BC nailed 5 mans and early raiding and heroic dungeon and raid attunement efforts were perfect. Professions meant more, careful CC was still needed and it allowed more flexibility for class choices but the biggest downfall in BC was gear driven specs in later raiding where each tier heavily favoured specific specs that eventually forced everyone to play the specs that matched their gear perks and stats. You could argue that flying mounts was also the start of the end of wow.
Wotlk gearing was the best in terms of really opening up player choices and multiple specs were viable in any tier but this is where it started to really dumb down content - no more CC, dungeons became a face roll and aggro management completely dissapeared.
I feel like the perfect game is somewhere between the 3: Maintaining the social culture of classic, the pace of play and class viability of BC and gearing and spec flexibility of WoTLK.
I don’t feel anything post WoTLK brought anything positive to the game.
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For me it’s Vanilla/TBC - the ability for serious Druid/Pally tanking I think opens it up quite a bit.
I don’t think I’ve EVER had as much fun as I did in Kharazan with my casual guild.
But Vanilla was just outstanding as well.
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Between Burning Crusade’s release and patch 2.0.10 was the game’s pinnacle for fun. That was when the community learned it could cause any nerf through forum QQ. The QQ didn’t even have to be truthful to bring about nerfs, just loud enough.
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IMO, in the big picture Wrath was the beginning of the end for WoW. If you look at sub numbers over time, Wrath truthfully added very little subs, and it was really TBC and Classic that built the game by adding literal millions and millions of players. Wrath introduced heavy phasing with linear quest flow in some zones, and was the beginning of a lot of pruning and homogenization. It was also the first expansion where you spent significant time chain-running easy dungeons in the dungeon finder…
I don’t really get your point about Vanilla and “favored classes”. All classes offered something unique and compelling in Vanilla. If you’re narrowly looking at raid dps or raid main tanking, then yes there were obviously favored classes. But Vanilla was about more than raiding.
In any case, I think TBC was the best early-WoW had to offer, because it significantly expanded the scope of Vanilla WoW without really altering or compromising its core design.
Beyond Wrath, I agree that very little of any significant value was added to the game. They started pruning so much from the game that “expansions” really turned into contractions of the game, and most of the post-Wrath questing zones were so linear and heavily phased that they offered zero replay value.
Somewhere around MoP and WoD is where it became clear that they were done adding genuinely new abilities/talents to the game, and that with each new expansion they were simply going to reshuffle our shrinking pool of abilities across a wider and wider span of levels and call it an “expansion”.
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Vanilla was the best for me. AV in Vanilla was the most fun i’ve had in a MMO.
I also loved the dungeons in Vanilla.
What I liked about TBC is how they balanced the classes, and the new talents/abilities. But in my opinion, TBC ruined pvp… resilence was a terrible system, in my opinion… and did the finishing killing blow to AV.
So TBC adding things I liked and took away things I liked.
WotLK was the beginning of the end. Heirlooms completely ruined the leveling experience. LFD was a nice change, but had lasting consequences. I overall got pretty bored of WotLK pretty quickly.
Legion was actually my favorite expansion since vanilla.
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I agree on resilience 100%. I think they should have left it exactly as it was in Vanilla.
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Last patch before BC was the most balanced class wise, but the raids in vanilla were made to easy by the patch. WOTLK was a pinnacle of wow I believe.
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3.1 for me
All the flavor of vanilla AND ulduar, no lfd and super easy lootz
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This is personal, but questing was the best in TBC. Quest hubs were more naturally organized, questing had a nice balance of linear and non-linear flow, and the daily hubs were just really cool.
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Vanilla was amazing because the game was still new and exciting. Everyone was still figuring it all out and progressing.
IMO, BC was an extension of vanilla but with a lot of class balance issues resolved. The content was great and tons of gameplay after 70. BC gets my overall vote but I can’t wait for Classic to release!
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Which expansion could you go back to Northrend and solo those raids? It was then that I had the most fun - because I just never raided… So finally being able to experience Icecrown Citadel, Ulduar and stuff like that was when I had the most fun.
I also enjoyed the Paladin class the most in Mists of Pandaria. Protection Paladin was amazingly fun to play.
That’s not true. Druids were BiS off tanks because another warrior or pally would compete with the MT for plate. Druids and pally tanks also were awesome in dungeons.
And sub optimal hybrid performance? In terms of what exactly? Hybrids happened to be the best healers. Rogues? Rogues were terrible healers, so I guess pures had suboptimal healing performance…
And that seems fair. Otherwise you get the watered down mess that is retail where everything feels and plays exactly alike outside of the holy trinity archetypes.
Variety is not a virtue. And it depends on what level of raiding you’re talking about. Even in modern WoW players still bring the class and spec best suited for the job. This thinking hasn’t gone anywhere, just look at the amount of specs represented in the mythic invitational for example.
In vanilla, if you’re talking about beer league raiding or friends and family style raiding you’ll find a much broader range of classes and quite a bit of overlap, because those people are just looking for warm bodies.
So, you’re going to have criticize the whole of WoW along the same lines if you’re going to be fair, because not much has changed. People don’t care if a class is 1% or 20% better, the top quartile of raiders just takes what’s numerically better. And, the bottom quartile of raiders doesn’t care what you bring, now or even during vanilla.
Given that, I believe that the version of the game that maximizes class differences is the best version of the game, because having unique classes that all felt different was great and made for unique gameplay experiences, and that was the most true during vanilla.
That said, I guess I’ve nitpicked enough. I just think the original game and its underlying philosophy was the bedrock for WoW’s overall success and that all further iterations were fundamentally decrements in one area or another.
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Truth! I think that’s what made vanilla so special. The fact that I had to go through 5 zones on two continents, past opposite factions hubs just to turn in a quest that would give me a new belt…but would open up a quest chain for something even better down the road. The game was fun because you had to invest time into it.
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I think you are right that it existed somewhere between the three of vanilla, bc, and wrath. I think it is a combo of all 3 and each had their specialty.
Vanilla was hands down the best for immersion and the rpg element of the game.
BC was the best for dungeons and mechanics and overall enjoyment of an end game system with all the attunements.
Wrath was the best story line and best specs. Classes were in their best state and most enjoyable to play. Wrath had the best “end boss” with the lich king storyline coming to an end.
They all three had their “best at”.
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Wrath and MoP…
More casual players had plenty to do, and could really progress in raids for the first time. Wrath was the pinnacle of the PuG raiding scene. There was also things for the more hardcore players as well in challenge modes and raid achievements, etc.
MoP did something similar with Flex raiding. A good balance of things to do for everyone.
Vanilla, the game was new and was all the rage. TBC was decent, except for the structure of the raids that encouraged guild poaching and feeder guilds.
Cata destroyed the old world, so that makes it bad.
WoD gave us Pathfinder, and Legion only compounded the problems with WoD. I can’t speak to BfA, as I haven’t played it.
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This post is so good about conveying what was good (and misunderstood) about Vanilla that it should be framed and hung in the Classic Forums.
For me, the peak of WoW was the glorious 2-3 week pre-nerf period at the end of Burning Crusade when Divine Storm was introduced and ret paladins, at long last, after years of stagnation and failure, became good (ok, ludicrously, comically overpowered and capable of soloing heroics, but whatever)
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For me, it was TBC. I also really enjoyed vanilla. But the added viability to the “off specs” made it a lot of fun. I also liked that they made pvp a whole different entity. It felt really good not having to raid for pvp gear.
2006-2008 for sure. Mid Vanilla through mid BC. Easily the best time in WoW’s history.
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I love the immersion and community that Classic did bring, TBC brought in amazing raids this expansion blew my mind! But for me WOTLK was and will always be my ‘best wow’ probably due to the hype of the Lich King but loved pretty much everything of this expansion. I didn’t touch on any of the other expansions but i definitely enjoyed them all. I will make a special mention to WoD after getting my Lord of war title i haven’t felt that ‘i did it’ feeling in a long time.